Lenten Ember Days 2019

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Lenten Ember Days in 2019

Wednesday, 13 March

Friday, 15 March

Saturday, 16 March

 


The Lenten Ember Days are the Wednesday after the First Sunday of Lent and the following Friday and Saturday, so this year they fall on March 13th, 15th, and 16th. While there is no additional fasting or abstinence requirement during the Lenten Ember Days beyond the obligatory abstinence from meat on Fridays during Lent for all Catholics age 14 and above, the Ember Days are always a time of prayer, especially for seminarians. Please keep in prayer the seminarians of the Personal Ordinaiate of the Chair of St Peter: Armando Alejandro, Nathan Davis, Roberto Brunel, Patrick McCain, & Robb Lester.  

RSVP for Wednesday School: 13 March 2019

Joining us for Wednesday School on March 13th? Please RSVP using the form below so that we may adequately prepare. If you’re one of our regularly Wednesday School families and you’re not able to make it this week, would you please also respond and mark the number of people coming as 0? This also helps us prepare. Thank you!

Homily on Quinquagesima

Fr. Allen's homily on Sunday, 3 March, Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday

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We continue today through this little season of Pre-Lent, once common throughout the Church but now given a new life amongst us in the Ordinariates. It is a season of preparation, of stretching and warming up to the rigors of a holy Lent with its abstinences and penances so that we may worthily and fitly celebrate a glorious Easter with its joy and feasting.

And today is the third and last Sunday of Pre-Lent, the Sunday called Quinquagesima - which simply means “fifty days” - we are now fifty days, counting in round numbers from Easter. And just three days, counting in precise numbers, from Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. The object of these Pre-Lenten days is to prepare ourselves so that we may hit the ground running on Ash Wednesday. As John Betjeman’s humorous little poems has it,

The Gesimas – Septua, Sexa, Quinc

Mean Lent is near, which makes you think…

And that’s all I want to do in this morning’s homily, to think with you just a bit about Lent and remind you and myself, in very practical terms, just what the Church calls us to in keeping a holy Lent. And so this will perhaps be less homily and more Sunday School lesson, but I do want to at least start from this morning’s Gospel.

Jesus points out a peculiar thing with regard to human perception - what we notice, and what we miss: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Why, indeed? And of course the answer is implicit in the question: our own vision is obscured, our perception is distorted, by the log of our own sin. It makes us notice and magnify the faults of others, but minimize or overlook altogether our own.

But charity, love, in our hearts works, clarifies, and corrects our vision, so that the faults of others seem small and our awareness of their virtues increases. St Therese of Lisieux writes about applying the medicine of charity to improve her perception of her sisters in the convent:

“If, when I desire to increase this love in my heart, the demon tries to set before my eyes the faults of one or other of the Sisters, I hasten to call to mind her virtues, her good desires; I say to myself that if I had seen her fall once, she may well have gained many victories which she conceals through humility; and that even what appears to me a fault may in truth be an act of virtue by reason of the intention.”

By very intentionally looking with the eyes of love and humility, like putting on a pair of glasses, Therese is able to see her sisters in a new way: she can see the good in them, what is lovely in them.

Which brings me back around to Quinquagesima, and preparing for Lent. Because Lent itself is a kind of preparation, forty days of prayer and fasting, so that we may see clearly the love of God poured out for us in Christ. It is taking us to Good Friday, when our Lord, for us men and for our salvation, put out into the deep of the great sea of love so that we might share in the great miracle of Easter Sunday.

So, on this Quinquagesima Sunday, we want to think about keeping a holy Lent, to be ready for Ash Wednesday. So what does the Church, first of all, require of us in Lent. And require, you know, is the right word. "You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church" is one of the seven precepts of the Church, binding on all Catholics - these “positive laws,” as the Catechism says, “decreed by the pastoral authorities … meant to guarantee to the faithful the very necessary minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor.”

So here is what the current code requires as our necessary minimum for Lent:

1.     A day of fast is one on which Catholics who are eighteen to fifty-nine years old are required to keep a limited fast. In this country, one may eat a single, normal meal and have two snacks, so long as these snacks do not add up to a second meal. Children are not required to fast, but their parents must ensure they are properly educated in the spiritual practice of fasting. Those with medical conditions requiring a greater or more regular food intake can easily be dispensed from the requirement of fasting by their pastor. The days of fasting are Ash Wednesday - that’s this coming Wednesday - and Good Friday.

2.     A day of abstinence is a day on which Catholics fourteen years or older are required to abstain from eating meat (under the current discipline in America, fish, eggs, milk products, and condiments or foods made using animal fat are permitted in the Western Rite of the Church, though not in the Eastern Rites.) Again, persons with special dietary needs can easily be dispensed by their pastor. Ash Wednesday and all Fridays in Lent are days of abstinence. Of course it used to be that abstinence was required all other Fridays during the year, except during Eastertide. Since the reforms after the Second Vatican Council, Catholics in America are currently to offer some kind of penance of their own choosing on Fridays.

Now, those days of fasting and abstinence are what is minimally required of us. But of course it is the custom as well - not a requirement but a custom - to “give up” something during Lent, or even to take on some spiritual discipline. And I want to encourage all of us to think between now and Ash Wednesday about how we and our families can enter fully into Lent, to have a plan, of how to approach this privileged time of preparation for memorial of our redemption. Self-denial of pleasures, things not wrong in themselves, is liberating - it trains our wills so that we are not slaves to our appetites and desires, so that in the circumstances of our lives when the law of love requires sacrifice, we will be ready to say no to ourselves so that we can say yes to our neighbor in need.

Self-denial, giving things up, also strengthens us in the battle against temptation. When we discipline our wills to refuse ourselves pleasures when they are not sinful, we strengthen ourselves to say no to pleasures and indulgences when they are sinful.

Denying ourselves some of our usual indulgences also teaches us solidarity with those who go without every day because of their poverty - it binds us to our neighbors in need. It is good for us to know what it is like to be hungry voluntarily, so that we will learn compassion for those who are in real and constant hunger.

And finally, denying ourselves these small pleasures, our usual indulgences, gives us just a glimpse into what our Lord gave up for us, what our redemption cost him, emptying himself for us and becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross. And when we understand our Lenten disciplines that way, we will find Lent to be a time of joy and gratitude, because it will allow us to see more clearly, to feel more deeply, God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.

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Letter from Fr. Allen: Quinquagesima & Ash Wednesday - February 28, 2019

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Dear Friends,

This Sunday is Quinquagesima, which means that the holy season of Lent is upon, and that it is also time for the Bishop's Annual Appeal.

Lent
In his message for Lent, Pope Francis encourages us to be urgent in our Lenten observance: "Let us not allow this season of grace to pass in vain! Let us ask God to help us set out on a path of true conversion. Let us leave behind our selfishness and self-absorption, and turn to Jesus’ Pasch. Let us stand beside our brothers and sisters in need, sharing our spiritual and material goods with them. In this way, by concretely welcoming Christ’s victory over sin and death into our lives, we will also radiate its transforming power to all of creation."

You will see [here] a schedule for special Lenten devotions, including the Imposition of Ashes on Ash Wednesday, added times for Confessions, Stations of the Cross, and more. Don't let this season, a privileged time for growth in grace, slip away! Make a plan now for your own Lenten disciplines of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, and especially for how those disciplines will be lived out in the domestic church which is your home and family. Here's a helpful guide to keeping a holy Lent in preparation for the commemoration of the Lord's blessed Passion and precious Death, and the joy of his mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension. And here's my own favorite source of inspiration for Lenten meal planning!

Bishop's Appeal
The annual Bishop's Appeal for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter also begins on Quinquagesima. At Mass this Sunday I will read a letter from Bishop Lopes inviting you to participate, but here I will make my own appeal: give generously! As a member of the Ordinariate's Governing Council, I can assure you that your gifts to the appeal will be a real and fruitful investment, carefully husbanded, in our common mission and ministry of evangelism and unity. Even beyond the fiscal realities of our Ordinariate's youth and relatively small size, our chancery is an intentionally lean operation. Your gift will make a substantial difference in the chancery's services and the Bishop's ministry, which - and this bears emphasis - is our ministry, too. Your gift is a tangible expression of our unity.

Many of you will have received a pledge card and information about the appeal in your mailboxes this week, and if not, we will have more available at Mass. Ashley and I have already made our pledge and first payment, and I urge you prayerfully to consider your gift and to make your pledge as well (might as well do it now!). 

God bless you,
Fr Allen

Letter from Fr. Allen: Chair of St Peter - February 21, 2019

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Dear Friends,

The image [below] shows the great reliquary of the Chair of St. Peter in the apse of St Peter's Basilica. The reliquary, in gilt bronze, is the work of the great renaissance artist Bernini. I'm not usually a fan of the baroque myself, but the reliquary is an astonishing work of art, with its contrast of putti and monumental Doctors of the Church eastern and western (Chrysostom and Athanasius, Augustine and Ambrose).

But all that of course is only the reliquary. The relic it contains is an oak chair, not at all comfortable looking, trimmed with ivory. It is missing pieces and pretty worm-eaten as well. The chair was a gift to Pope John VIII from Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor, in the AD 875. For many centuries it was believed to have been the actual chair St Peter, that in which he sat to teach while in Rome, though more modern investigations by the Vatican have revealed that it dates from the 6th century. Nevertheless, the chair represents teaching authority of Peter and his successors, and their vocation and duty to preside over the whole Church in charity. 

As you know, our Ordinariate takes its name from this Chair and the gift of authority and love it represents (particular for those of us for whom, in former days, "the lack of papal primacy and the Magisterium [was] experienced as an ecclesial deficit," as Cardinal Müller once put it). This year our "Solemnity of the Title" is transferred from its usual date of February 22nd to this Sunday. We will keep the feast at our 11AM Mass, and continue our prayer and praise with Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at 4.30PM. I hope you will join us!

I ask you to pray for the Meeting for the Protection of Minors in the Church, called by Pope Francis, which began earlier today at the Vatican, that the meeting will be an effective exercise of the power of Peter's Chair, and so a turning point in battle against the filth of sexual abuse in the Church. Today is the memorial of St. Peter Damien, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, a reformer who crusaded against clerical sexual abuse and licentiousness in his own time. May he intercede for the Church our time as well!

God bless you,
Fr Allen